


Erro, Ergo Sum

by pagination



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fail!sex, Humor, M/M, Oblivious Phil Coulson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-05
Updated: 2014-09-05
Packaged: 2018-02-16 06:44:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2259831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pagination/pseuds/pagination
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If there is an indisputable fact about Phil Coulson, it is that he is ordinary. When all other truths like mortality, identity, humanity, and biology are under attack, this one cornerstone of reality is the ground he will stand and die on.</p><p>Phil Coulson is ordinary, damn it, and people do not fall in love with ordinary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Erro, Ergo Sum

**Author's Note:**

> Spoiler alert. Phil Coulson survives the Avengers. 
> 
> So now you know.

“That can’t be right,” says Phil. “It’s not possible. Are you sure?”

“Well, that answers that question,” Maria says. She looks apathetically disgusted with life. “And now I owe Jimmy twenty. I don’t know why I thought dying would’ve made you smarter.”

Phil doesn’t laugh. It’s not that it’s too soon for death jokes. His are just funnier.

 

+

 

Apparently— _allegedly_ —Clint Barton is in love with Phil. Has been for over a decade. There’s nobody around who doesn’t already know, according to Maria. Phil’s the last to the game. He doesn’t like the feeling.

“I would have noticed,” he tells Jasper, and

“He’s been married twice, for God’s sake. One of those times was to you,” he tells Bobbi, and

“He’s _straight_ ,” he tells Jimmy.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Jimmy says. Barton’s infatuation—“Crush,” says Jasper, and, “Full-blown, Ol’ Yeller, ‘take him out back and put him out of his misery’ bullshit,” says Bobbi—has apparently been obvious for years. To his coworkers. To his ex-wives. To his numerous ex- and future- everything. Basically, to all persons not Phil Coulson.

The joke, if there is one, is ill-timed. It makes Phil doubt himself. Not that there’s much left that doesn’t make him doubt himself, these days. Still, he thinks he would have noticed. 

“Were you even listening to what he was doing on on the coms?” Jasper demands in some nameless diner, indignant in the way only he can be, his cheeks full of pancake and his eyes pinched half-shut. 

“I always listened,” Phil says mournfully, because he did, and because unnecessary chatter on the coms were and continue to be a sore point, like a bruise that will just keep on getting bumped long after it should have healed. 

 _Barton would make a fortune as a phone sex operator_ , a junior agent wrote pitifully in one After Action Report. _Please don’t make me rewrite this._

“He was never like that with any other handler,” Jasper says.

“I was his only handler,” Phil reminds, and Jasper stabs his fork at him, hissing, “See?!” as though Jasper hadn’t begged after Mauritania, literally _on his knees,_ never to be assigned Barton again. 

Phil tries to strike a blow for reason. “You’re too experienced to fall for one of Barton’s pranks, Jasper.”

Jasper is unimpressed. “Nobody waits ten years for a payoff to a prank. Unless you’re Fury. And he’s no Fury.”

“I would have noticed,” Phil says again, dogged on this one point. Phil is good with people. He knows he is. It’s in his file.

Jasper stabs his pancake. He’s cut it into the representation of an iconic cartoon character. “Why would you?” he asks Mickey Mouse, stab, stab, stab. “You never noticed any of the others.”

Phil says blankly, “Others?”

 

+

 

For the record, and Phil wants this clear, there are no ‘others.’ Because if there is an indisputable fact about Phil Coulson, it is that he is ordinary. When all other truths, like mortality, identity, humanity, and biology are under attack, this one cornerstone of his reality is the ground he will stand and die on.

Phil Coulson is ordinary, damn it, and people do not fall in love with _ordinary_.

 

+

 

“Huh,” says Barton, materializing in Phil’s temporary Hub office. “This one doesn’t have a sofa.”

Phil stops typing to twiddle a pen between his fingers, abruptly tongue-tied at the reality of Clint Barton-who-might-be-in-love-with-him, a similar but distinctly different model from Everyday Clint Barton, in his office. Clint Barton-who-might-be-in-love-with-him looks exactly like Everyday Clint Barton, which is disappointing; it’s an argument of evidence in absence that does nothing to provide either proof of love or proof of prank. 

“Hey,” says Barton, squinting at him. “What? Is there something on my face?”

Phil takes his nerves firmly in hand. Barton is looking drawn, tired in a way Phil doesn’t like, but otherwise remarkably cheerful. “Nothing worse than what’s usually there.”

“Good looks? Charm? Ketchup?”

“Trouble.”

“It’s what I do,” Barton says complacently. 

Silence falls. Despite Phil’s odd attack of nerves, it’s a comfortable one. Death and resurrection haven’t made any material changes to their relationship; Barton is still, professional that he is, exactly the same as he was before. Beyond a pleased, “Huh, I guess the only thing that’s inevitable now is taxes,” he hasn’t said or done anything to suggest he has a problem with things as they now stand. They picked up again exactly as they left off:  professionals who trust each other to have their backs, friends who know how to move in each others’ spaces. And, if Jasper and Maria and Jimmy and Bobbi and others are to be believed, men who are utterly oblivious to each others’ internal realities.

It isn’t anything out of the ordinary to have the Everyday model of Clint Barton in his office trying to manufacture a sofa out of filing boxes and dust sheets. Would Everyday Clint Barton have done so with so much muscle on display? His pants seem unnecessarily form-fitting. Phil has never noticed how tight they are across his … parts. His geometrically pleasing parts. Round, firm, flexing—

Ass, Phil tells himself firmly. Penis. Cock. Balls. Dick. Ass ass ass. For fuck’s sake. He was a Ranger. He can think the words to himself in the privacy of his own goddamn mind. Clint Barton’s pants are tight across his ….

… his gluteal muscles. 

Phil sighs.

“Hey, remember Twinkie?” Barton asks, biceps flexing, geometrically pleasing parts rolling, as he shifts heavy boxes with ease. “Agent Host,” he clarifies, with a glance at Phil’s suddenly blank face. “I saw her in Barcelona last week. She’s stationed out there. Did you know that? I didn’t know that.”

Phil does a rapid memory check and produces the face to go with the name. “Donna,” he recalls, warming to the recollection. He was her training officer for six months in ’07. “How is she?”

“Looking good. Going native. She said to say hi.”

Phil smiles.

“Man, she had the worst crush on you,” Barton says nostalgically. “She wanted to know if you still had that navy blue Tom Ford number you used to wear. She almost cried when I told her it got burned in Mexico.”

Phil stops smiling.

“The _worst_ crush,” Barton repeats with relish. He steals Phil’s stapler to make throw pillows out of sheets of chemical requisition forms and kleenex, which is so madly Clint Barton logical that Phil’s breath huffs out in relief at the predictability of it. “She and Nguyen started a fan club. They had membership badges and everything.”

“Barton,” Phil says abruptly. Barton looks up at him. “Are you playing a prank on Jasper and Maria?” He considers. “And Woo? And Bobbi Morse?”

“No?” Barton says, and then frowns. “Maybe. Probably. Why?”

Phil opens his mouth to ask, “ _Do_ you have a crush on me?” then closes it again, question unasked. It’s too embarrassing. He’s tempted to beat his head into his desk. He doesn’t.

Barton’s filing box sofa has a fundamental structural flaw, which Phil thinks he could mention. He also thinks a man who throws himself off of buildings as often as Barton does should learn some basic appreciation for architectural stability. He says nothing, on the grounds that practical application is the best teaching tool. The decision makes him feel unaccountably tender towards Barton. The man’s willful ignorance of physics is endearing. No, not endearing. It isn’t endearing.

He frowns.

“Admit it,” Barton says, positioning his rear end gingerly over the finished construct. “You missed me.”

Phil watches him crow in triumph as he lies back, then waits patiently for gravity and poor construction to take their inevitable revenge before he says, “I can’t imagine why you’d think that.” 

The look on Barton’s face as he jackknifes into a hopeless wedge between boxes is soul-satisfying in a way Phil can’t articulate.

 

+

 

“So hey,” says Jasper, jogging after Phil in Corridor D-6. “Here’s a thought. You should let Barton fuck you.”

Phil stops dead. “What.” 

“Let. Barton. Fuck. You,” Jasper says, more loudly.

A passing agent glances sidelong at them, only to hurry on when she catches Phil’s eye. He thinks wistfully about punching Jasper in the dick. 

“He’s moping around like a goddamn Eeyore. He’s depressing me. He’s depressing Hill. He’s depressing _Captain America._ Man up and take one for the team. Or if that doesn’t do it for you, you could offer to fuck him. Make his sad dreams come true so he’ll stop making baby agents cry. Come on. Your dick, an orifice of Barton’s choice—”

“Go away, Jasper,” Phil says, and escapes into his office, shutting the door on Jasper’s open mouth.

“The boy’s got a point,” Nick says from behind him. 

Files drop from Phil’s nerveless fingers.

Nick smirks. “You’re wound up too tight, Cheese. A booty call’s just what the doctor ordered.”

“I don’t date coworkers,” Phil reminds, hiding his flush by scooping up the paperwork. “You know why.”

“You really got to let what happened with Rivera and Thomas go. It was thirty years ago, for fuck’s sake.”

“Rivera was _eleven_ yea—  Why are you here?”

Nick ignores the question. “I look like I care? Barton’s got the hots for you. Go tap that ass. He’s not your subordinate. He’s not gonna use you as a stepping stone for his career, or whatever it was that fucker Rivera wanted.”

Phil heads for his desk and takes refuge behind it, carefully smoothing down his tie. “That wasn’t Kevin. That was Irene Claris. Kevin was the one who was trying to get dirt on SHIELD for Senator Morrison.”

“Still don’t care. I hated both those assholes.”

“You’ve hated everyone I’ve dated.”

“That’s because you got crap taste. I like Barton.” Phil lifts an incredulous eyebrow. Grimacing, Nick amends, “Fine. I don’t want to disappear Barton. Happy? You don’t have to date him. Just screw him. Fuck, man.” He regards Phil with benign tolerance. “Show a little trust.”

“Ignoring the irony of those words coming out of your mouth to begin with,” Phil says, outraged, “you’re a _terrible_ _friend_.”

 

+

 

Because even if Clint is in love with him, which he isn’t, even if Phil _is_ inclined to reciprocate, which he isn’t— 

The thought stops there, hedged around with residual pain and not worth exploring. Phil has been in love, and fooled himself into thinking he was loved in turn, but no matter what he thought at the time, the fact is that nobody has been _in love_ with Phil in his life. It’s not a sad thing, it’s just a thing. He’s accepted long since that whatever his redeeming qualities—he’s not modest; he knows he has many—he is simply not lovable. 

But he’s still a healthy male with a functioning libido, so he occasionally spends a few minutes in bed, taking care of it with the quick efficiency of rote. It isn’t about the buildup anymore, hasn’t been for a long time. It’s about a simple need that he gets out of the way as fast as he can, so he can move on to things that matter more. Like sleep. Or reviewing files. Or browsing eBay to see if any quality memorabilia have come up for sale.

So it’s strange to rouse out of his drifting thoughts one night to realize he’s hard as a rock and has been lazily stroking himself for the past half-hour. Not enough to get off. Just enough to stay on the edge and linger there a while. It’s unusual enough to be a novelty. Worse, he realizes that he’s spent the last hour fantasizing about a blond man. About a coworker. About—a part of him shudders, appalled, titillated, already guilty—about Barton. _Clint._  

He’s really too old for this kind of thing. He determinedly wills his stiffy away and falls asleep sometime between thinking, _Just say no_ , and nonsensically, _Aww, cigar_. His night is made torturous by a confusingly sexual dream about Clint stringing his bow and smoking, the frustration of which has him waking up with morning wood the likes of which he hasn’t had since before he died.

Damn Jasper. Damn Nick. Damn everybody. He jacks off in the shower, determinedly irritated with the world in general, and with his so-called _friends_ in particular.

He doesn’t know what Jasper and Nick and the rest of them are up to, but he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like it at all.

 

+

 

The Bus is somewhere over Belarus when Nick calls. Phil is needed back at the Hub ASAP to debrief on the Eastern Europe situation, “Because Putin’s being a crazy motherfucker, and I’ve had it up to _here_ with being caught with our pants down,” Nick fumes. 

Phil keys the change in orders to the cockpit. “On it, boss.”

“And do something about your boy while you’re here,” Nick adds. “He’s getting on my last nerve.”

Phil debates objecting yet again to the assumption of responsibility—Barton is not and has not ever been Phil’s _boy_ —but he gives it up as a lost cause. “What’s he done now,” he sighs.

“He’s starting to depress me, Cheese, and it takes a lot to depress me. I got a high threshold. Alien invasions, imminent nuclear holocausts, my best friend letting some Asgardian diva who gets wardrobe tips from Cher _kill him._ ”

“I thought we agreed you’d stop taking that personally.”

Nick glares at him. It’s his default expression, but after decades of friendship, Phil can recognize its sincerity. “I hear that asshole singing Whisky Lullaby one more time, I will put him in the brig with Sound of Music on endless replay. My right hand to God.”

It’s not until his fourth day back that Phil has a chance to do anything about it. Barton’s a past expert at not being found if he doesn’t want to be found, and for all his alleged annoyance at him, Nick’s far more worried about the situation in Eastern Europe than Phil realized. In between startup organization for the fledgling S.W.O.R.D., negotiating a cease-fire between three separate warlords long-distance, managing the displacement and emergency shelter of a million refuges, and then dismantling the finances of a terrorist cell out of Chechnya, Phil doesn’t get a minute to himself until the end of hour seventy-nine. 

Phil finds Barton in the canteen, a more public venue than he’d like, but he’s past having fucks to give. There’s nobody with him. Phil sits down in the seat opposite, doesn’t ask if he’s allowed, doesn’t ask how Barton is, doesn’t do anything but concentrate on the egg sandwich on rye that’s centered on his plate. 

Sitting down feels terrifyingly good. 

Barton brightens when he sees him. “Sir,” he greets. His face is drawn, haggard, eyes bruised and red-rimmed. Phil can read him just fine, no matter what his friends say.

“Barton.” Phil’s had maybe half an hour of sleep since he landed. Exhaustion is making his peripheral vision flicker. He’s been in this state before and knows his best bet is to compartmentalize and divide his immediate future into small, manageable chunks. For instance. He plants his left forefinger on one half of his sandwich. He picks up his knife in the other hand. Exercising great care, he cuts his sandwich into four triangles. He fusses at the proportions. Geometric precision with his food, like polishing his 1940s memorabilia collection, is a coping mechanism when he’s feeling out of control. Fuck it. He is Agent Phil the Second Coming Coulson. He can regiment his food if he wants to. 

He can feel Barton’s eyes on him as he shaves another millimeter off the triangle to the left. After years of working together, Barton knows him as well as anyone.

“So,” Barton says, dragging the vowel out. _Sooooooooo_. “Having a good week then, sir?”

Phil deliberately puts down his knife, considers his geometry, then looks up. “Barton,” he says again. It takes extra concentration to articulate the word. His mouth feels like it’s moving too much. He works his lips in and out, thinking absent-mindedly about goldfish.

The laughter lines around Barton’s eyes deepen. “Coulson.”

“Barton,” Phil frowns at the repetition. He’s letting down his own reputation of unflappability. He opens his mouth to say, “Whisky Lullaby? Really?” Instead, to his own distant horror, he hears himself say, “Have you ever masturbated to fantasies of a coworker?”

Of course, he reflects sadly while Barton recovers, this would be the day—days?—he decided to wear his favorite tie. 

“Sorry,” Barton wheezes, dabbing the mist of soda spray off his upper lip and nose. His eyes are wet. “You couldn’t warn a guy first?”

Phil wipes hopelessly at his front with a fresh napkin. “You don’t have to answer the question if you’d rather not.”

“No, it’s just—“ He frowns at Phil. “Why? Is Psych asking? Aw, tie. I’m sorry, sir. Here, let me get that—”

“Psych would just ask you directly, if you showed up to your appointments and they really wanted to know,” Phil points out, while Barton hurls wads of napkins at his chest, well-meaning if utterly unhelpful. “I had a conversation with Jasper, and something he said made me wonder.”

“Yeah?”

Phil shakes his head. Bats the next wad of paper out of mid-air. Barton stops emptying the napkin dispenser. “It’s an intrusive personal question. I shouldn’t have asked.”

Barton grins, his eyes wary. “Little too late for takebacks now, sir. Yeah, sometimes I do. If you’re gonna ask me about which ones though, I’ll have to plead the fifth. How about you?”

Phil gives up on his tie. “No.”

“C’mon, sir. Fair’s fair. I answered your question, you answer mine.”

“I mean no, I don’t allow myself to fantasize about coworkers,” Phil explains patiently, and watches Barton’s face go blank. “I have a strict policy about respecting my colleagues. I trained myself years ago not to view them in a sexual light.”

“At all? I mean—“ Barton clears his throat, suddenly intent on his mac and cheese. “I thought, you and Melinda May. Kowalski told me you two were a thing.”

It’s an old rumor. “Friends. Never a ‘thing.’”

“Oh. And you and Hill?”

“Respected colleague. Never a ‘thing.’”

“Oh,” says Barton. “Huh.”

Phil squints at him. 

He shrugs. “It’s just, you never really talk about your personal life,” he says. “Not your personal _personal_ life. I mean, you know.” Barton waves a vague hand at some presumed world beyond the walls of the Hub. “Out there. Is this a new stage to our relationship and I just missed a memo?”

“Clint,” Phil says, putting down his sandwich. He leans into Clint, because in his fatigue-drunk state, it’s suddenly important that he be understood. Very, very important. Very. “I may be private, but I wouldn’t keep secrets from you. Unless it was classified. But you should know that if I ever got involved with someone in your life, you’d be the first to know. Well, after me. I would be the first to know, and probably the other person. And probably Nick, because he just finds out things like— but you would be fourth. No, fifth. After Maria. She’s like Nick. Less bald. More eyes. But after them. And Melinda. Because she’s like Maria. But you’d be the sixth. Seventh?”

Clint stares at him. “You called me Clint.”

Phil frowns, hurt. “I can’t call you Clint?”

“You can call me Clint. You just never do.”

“You’re a friend,” Phil says earnestly. “You’re a good friend. Good friends should call each other by their first names. You should do that. Call me Phil. I’m Phil.” 

Clint stops blinking. “What is this, your fourth day without sleep?”

“Is it?” Phil asks, trying to remember. 

“Huh.” Clint’s face flickers through expressions too quickly for Phil to read in his semi-lucid state. He recognizes fondness, and regret, before it shifts to something stranger. “You’re not going to remember a word of this when you wake up, are you?”

Phil tries to think about this, decides the question must be rhetorical, and gives up on finding an appropriate response beyond, “You don’t smoke.” 

“I’m going to pretend I understood that.”

“And you’d be smoking me,” Phil says darkly, before he’s derailed by the color of his egg salad. It’s yellow. He eyes it with regret, dimly aware of Clint saying something. So yellow. Like a baby chicken. Poor egg. It never had a chance to be a chicken. Life is sad.

Across from him, Clint huffs into his hand. If it’s a laugh, it doesn’t sound happy. “—a better man,” he’s saying, “I’d put you to bed instead of asking you personal questions you’re too tired to dodge. Like if there’s any situation where you think you’d ever date a coworker.”

“You’re a good man,” Phil tells his sandwich mournfully. “You’re better. The best. The best man I know. I met Captain America. Did I tell you what I did when I met him?”

Clint’s shoulders sag. “Aw, Phil.”

Sixteen hours later, Phil wakes up in temporary quarters, headachy with too much sleep and the nagging certainty that he’s left something undone. He has no recollection of dressing down to his underwear and neatly putting his clothes away, but there’s an arrowhead tucked in the pocket of his suit pants so at some point he must have connected with Barton. What they actually talked about is anyone’s guess; Phil is left with the uneasy feeling that he hasn’t succeeded in his brief the way Nick was hoping.

It’s a moot point though, because Ops informs him that Barton is already gone: a mission in Sierra Leone, six-squad with sniper support, Jasper handling. And Nick has some intriguing rumors in hand about a possible transmutationist wandering around Brazil who can actually turn things into pure potassium _._ In and of itself it isn’t an especially useful talent except that potassium and water go together like Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, and of _course_ Brazil, where the relative humidity is 78% on the best of days: it’s a match made in exothermic heaven. 

Melinda files the flight plan. The rest of the team straggle back, looking refreshed. Phil retreats to his office on the Bus. There’s nothing to be done about Barton now, and he has more important things to think about than a colleague’s decade-long, unrequited and unwelc— unexpected attachment. To him.

So. He decides not to think about it anymore.

That decision made, he spends the next three hours in his office, absent-mindedly one-fingering ‘b b b b a a a a r r r r t t t t o o o o n n n n’ into a text editor. And for the sake of variety, the occasional ‘c c c c l l l l I I I I n n n n t t t t .’

 

+

 

Jasper calls Phil while he’s in Recife. All things considered, he probably shouldn’t have answered.

“What the fuck did you do to him?” Jasper demands, sounding more hysterical than a Level Seven agent has any right to be.

The phone line is staticky with the screech of brakes and the hollow shell rat-tat-tat of gunfire in the background. Phil, contemplating the motivational effects of a kitchen timer bolted onto a stack of alien tech and C-4, hums absent-mindedly. “Is now really a good time?”

“One lousy fuck!” Jasper shrieks over the screech of tearing metal. “ _How_ _hard could it have been_?” Then he hangs up, leaving Phil in possession of a dial tone, a stapler, and twenty-six seconds on the clock. 

 

+

 

“Why are we even talking about this,” says Melinda. It’s not a question. 

They’re flying back from Peru, and Phil has taken shelter in the cockpit. It’s Melinda’s space. Phil likes it. It’s welcoming in the same way that Melinda is, like emergency field surgery without morphine and tourniquets made from wire clothes hangers. Melinda is the only friend he has left that he wants to keep. All the others are assholes.

“Exactly my point,” Phil says. “We’ve been colleagues and friends for years. Obviously, if he feels something more than friendship towards me, it isn’t something he thinks he needs to act on. We’ve worked just fine without it.”

She ignores him.

“He’s not pining. It’s probably another Barton special. Some prank he decided to pull on Maria and Jasper that got out of hand.”

She ignores him.

He frowns at her. “Jasper says his morale’s been low. He seemed fine when I saw him. A little tired, but nothing serious. Have you heard anything? How was his integration back with SHIELD after the—“ he makes a gesture towards his head to indicate Loki’s mind control.

Melinda looks askance. “Since he had the psychometric jellyfish surgically removed from his forehead?”

“No, Loki’s mind-control. This is—“ He makes the gesture again. Says suspiciously, “This is the universally accepted sign for _mind-control_. What psychometric jellyfish? Was that a thing? I didn’t get a briefing.”

“I’m done with this conversation now,” she decides, and turns her attention back to the flight controls. “Go away.”

He goes away.

He still smells like smoke after the Alien Things Going Boom morgue incident, a chemical, sour stink that he knows from experience will be difficult to remove. He can hear the shower going as he passes through the Bus’s corridors—that will be Skye, clinging to the vain hope that simple soap and water will work as well as the enzymatic odor-removing gel SHIELD R&D produces for just these types of situations—and heads into his office, which has its own source of water. And its own large tube of gel. 

He strips down to his bare skin, and consigns his clothes to the hermetically sealable garment bag he keeps on hand. Even his shoes stink. He wraps them in plastic and pitches them in with his clothes. That done, he carefully lays out a small sheet of plastic, steps onto it, and begins the revolting task of de-stinking himself. The tube is labeled B10SPE-OR, which R&D insists alludes to some combination of function and composition. On the field, it’s commonly known as Biosperm. Clint’s commentary when it makes its appearance is invariably obscene, and grows increasingly graphic as he slathers it on, waits for it to harden, and then peels it off like a transparent body cast. Some of his post-op puppetry with the leftovers has been disturbingly creative.

Phil’s down to his lower half, his upper half starting to itch as the gel dries and begins to pull on his body hair, when the in-office comm system signals him. Two beeps means it’s a SHIELD call, voice only. 

“Answer,” he orders the system, squirting out more Biosperm to cover his hips. And adds, at the little chirp of connection: “Coulson.”

“Uh, hi, sir.” The voice is sheepish and terribly, wonderfully familiar.

Phil freezes.

“Um,” says Clint. Without even being able to see him, Phil knows he’s rubbing the back of his neck. “Is this a bad time?”

“Not at all.” He’s distantly proud that he manages to sound calm and collected. And then he realizes he’s sucking in his stomach and covering himself with both hands. Fortunately, there are no witnesses. “Is everything alright?”

“I guess.”

“You guess?”

“I mean, sure. Everything’s fine.” There’s an awkward pause. “I thought I’d— is everything fine with you?”

He sounds anxious, an edge to his voice that Phil remembers from the earliest days of their association. His reaction is instinctive, nearly Pavlovian. Clint sounds unhappy; all else fades away until it’s dealt with. “Everything’s fine. Talk to me.”

Another tight, miserable little silence. “Jasper said you called for me?”

Phil closes his eyes, promises himself a suitable vengeance on Jasper in the future, and forces his stomach muscles to relax. “I was just following up. I vaguely remember speaking to you before you left, but I’m not sure what I said. I hope it wasn’t anything too embarrassing.”

Clint snuffles a laugh; it’s still strained, but there’s enough sincerity in it that Phil’s shoulders ease. “You were pretty out of it. I haven’t seen you that bad since Zhengzhou.”

Phil remembers Zhengzhou more by its absence than its presence in his memory. He suppresses a wince and gets back to applying gel. “I suppose I have you to thank for the fact I woke up in bed instead of under a table somewhere?”

“Couldn’t just leave you out in the canteen, sir. People might start thinking you’re human, and then where would we be?”

“A disaster of Biblical proportions,” Phil says solemnly.

“Exactly. Fire and brimstone, the dead rising from the grave—“

“Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria—“

Clint snickers. “Ghostbusters. Nobody ever believes me when I tell them you have a sense of humor.”

“That’s classified information, Clint.”

A beat. “Okay,” Clint says, sounding relieved. “So, yeah. Let’s try that over. Hi, sir. Uh, Phil. What’re you up to? Anything fun?”

“I’m halfway through a tube of B10SPE-OR. It’s pulling on my chest hair. ‘Fun’ isn’t the word I’d choose.”

This time the silence is more pronounced.

“Clint?” Phil asks, wondering if the line had somehow dropped.

“Here,” Clint says in a strangled voice. “Sorry, yeah, hi. I had a … ow.”

“Are you hurt?” Monitoring Clint’s medical state is a knee-jerk reflex by now. The question comes out sharper than Phil intended.

“No! No. I mean, not seriously. Jasper took care of it. Just a little cut over my hip. Caught myself on a fire escape going down a building faster than I meant to. Only needed a few stitches. You’re frowning, aren’t you? Stop frowning. I didn’t do it on purpose.”

Clint’s voice is cajoling, shamelessly so. Even without visual, Phil can picture the stupidly endearing look that goes with that voice: large, hopeful eyes, lower lip tucked in, chin puckered. 

“I’m sure Jasper did an excellent job,” he says, ignoring the bubble of warmth in his chest.

“Yeaaaaaaah. Sure he does. I mean, he does just fine,” Clint amends, before Phil has a chance to take alarm at his lack of enthusiasm. “I kinda just wish you were still running me on ops like this. You’re still the best.”

“Yes,” Phil says gravely. “Yes, I am.”

Clint cracks with laughter. “Admit it. You miss me.” 

“We could use you on the Bus.”

“If I were on the Bus, I could help you rub sperm into those hard-to-reach places.”

Phil frowns down at his dick; it’s slowly stiffening, for no reason that he can understand. “Not necessary. But thanks for the thought.”

“You squirted some on the floor and rolled around in it like a pillbug, didn’t you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. That would ruin the carpet. I used a tarp.” Phil wiggles his toes. They squish. Clint is laughing though, and he finds himself smiling involuntarily. It’s a natural reaction to hearing joy, he tells himself, a psychosomatic reaction to certain kinds of sounds. Laughing babies and cats purring, that sort of thing. It’s nothing specific to Clint.

“Thanks,” Clint manages to say when he finishes laughing. “I needed that. I should, uh, go. I still have to finish the AAR.”

“You’re voluntarily doing paperwork?” Phil asks, absent-mindedly squirting out more gel. “Do you have a concussion?”

“Jasper promised me a blow job if I got it in on time,” Clint says solemnly. Phil shivers. “You know how I’m a sucker for a shiny scalp.”

“If I’d known that was all it took, I would’ve offered one years ago.”

Clint’s chuckle is strained. “From you, Phil, I’d hold out for full frontal and a real bed. Can’t let you think I’m easy.”

Phil is still smiling when Clint signs off. At least, he is until he looks down and discovers his dick is fully, irritatingly erect. And the gel around it has stiffened as well, now nearly at the point where it needs to be peeled off. Which means he’s about to end up with a Biosperm cast of his erection to dispose of in the public incinerator.

He sighs.

 

+

 

Phil doesn’t consider himself a deep man. He isn’t, in the parlance of television talk shows, ‘in touch with his feelings.’ His romantic relationships since he joined SHIELD have been practical more than spiritual—or rather, practical and sexual more than spiritual, or rather, practical and sexual more than spiritual and emotio—anyway, they’re not the kind that lead to white houses, picket fences, or long, meaningful exchanges of hopes and dreams. Mostly, they lead to gunfire or torture. It’s a thing.

In short, he has no idea what to do with this Clint Barton situation. It’s utterly outside of his comfort zone. Clint is— he’s a friend. He’s comfortable. He’s competent. He’s funny, and brilliant, and generous, and sympathetic, and strong, and brave, and despite everything that’s ever been done to him, a good man. A good, hot man. Phil admires him. Phil likes him. Phil likes him a lot. Phil has always liked him, even when Clint was on the terrorist watch-list, an elusive ghost who’d leave snarky, hilariously misspelled post-its in Phil’s hotel rooms criticizing his taste in beer and rating his ass in whatever pair of pants he wore to chase Clint that day.

Liking is one thing. Loving him? He wrestles with the question before eventually deciding that he loves Clint. Like he loves his World War II memorabilia (although maybe not as pure) and SHIELD (not as impersonal) and Natasha, Hill, and Nick (not really, nothing like the way he loves Nick, oh God, never.) 

But _in_ love with Clint? No. Probably no. Maybe. Possibly no. Definitely maybe. A little bit yes?

“Stupid,” he says into the emptiness of his office. “Stupid and stupid and fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck. Fuck. And _stupid_.” He puts his head between his knees and breathes.

Phil’s experience tells him that when in doubt, he should listen to his gut. He listens to his gut. His gut tells him to act like a man. 

So he visits the Nile.

(It’s a river in Egypt.)

The Nile is the longest river in the world, running some 6,853 km long. It contains two major tributaries, the White Nile and the Blue Nile. The first expedition to navigate its entire length was the White Nile expedition in ’04, a four-month effort staffed mostly by SHIELD, the CIA, MI6, and Mossad, because scientific missions that travel through eleven countries, a good nine of which are experiencing famine, economic collapse, civil wars, or harboring terrorist training camps, are useful from a purely logistical point of view. Also, because science is cool.

Phil helpfully shares all this with his team, because it’s interesting and educational, and because he’s channeling Mr. Rogers. Ward just looks confused. Skye asks, “Does it have internet?” Simmons perks up at the prospect of microbial sampling. Fitz perks up because Simmons perked up.

In private, Melinda says, “This is pathetic, even for you.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Phil says with dignity. “We’re here to investigate a Chitauri darkweb transaction. We have a mission.” That he asked for. And that Nick, cackling, had given to him, using almost the exact same words Melinda just did.

“I’m not judging. I’m just saying this is pathetic. Even for you.”

Three days later, Phil finds himself in a warehouse, cut off from his team and surrounded by upset arms dealers. About the only saving grace is that Melinda isn’t the type to say _I told you so_. 

“Sorry. I think I’m lost,” he tells Coatzee, the lead businessman in question. “I don’t suppose you know the way to Albuquerque?” 

Coatzee and his men draw guns in a pointed fashion. 

Granted, holding one of the jury-rigged Chitauri weapons Coatzee is throwing on the black market wasn’t really selling Phil’s innocent tourist cover anyway. Neither was the crowbar-cracked crate behind him, full of alien doodads. 

Oh well.

“So, what now?” Coatzee’s lieutenant asks his boss, while Phil puts down his guns.

“I kill him,” Coatzee says.

Phil raises his hand and tries to look friendly. The arms dealers stare at him. “Can we talk about this? The death thing?”

“No.”

“Oh.” Phil lowers his hand. “Okay.”

Coatzee spares him an incredulous look, so Phil explains, “It’s just, my coworkers don’t like it when I die. They’re worried that dying is turning into an emotional crutch. Last time, I’d just made a fool of myself in front of my childhood hero. This time, I might be harboring unacknowledged feelings for a coworker. I can see their point. From the outside looking in, it probably looks bad. But that’s—” he waves a vague hand, “—that’s not really your problem. Sorry. Don’t mind me.”

A short, baffled silence falls. “Yeah, I can see it,” Coatzee’s lieutenant says at last.

“It’s correlation, not causation,” Phil reassures.

“Interoffice romance is always tough.”

“I’ve always had a hard policy against it.”

“Because what if it goes poorly,” says the lieutenant, nodding.

“Or if the other person’s not the same rank, what if you’re really taking advantage.”

“Or you end up not able to separate the personal from the professional.”

“And it’s hard making that change in perspective after being opposed to it for so long,” Phil says earnestly. “It’s jarring.”

“But at the same time, compatible people don’t just grow on trees. Life’s short. You have to take some risks or live with your regrets.”

“Who’s living?” Coatzee demands, interrupting what Phil feels is a nice bonding moment. “What _living_? I’m going to kill him. What the fuck is this, Oprah?”

The lieutenant looks sheepish. Phil clears his throat, hearing a familiar ID code tapped through the comm, “Anyway, like I was saying, some of my coworkers have strong opinions about me dying again.”

On cue, an arrow materializes in the middle of Coatzee’s forehead. He goes cross-eyed and gapes. After a few seconds, he realizes that he’s just died, so he falls down. It’s like something out of an age-inappropriate Wile E. Coyote cartoon.

The lieutenant turns bulging eyes onto Phil. A couple of the men spin wildly, looking for the shooter. 

Phil shrugs. Looks apologetic. “Like I said.” Then he kicks the pistol out of the lieutenant’s hand. 

Everything goes uphill from there. From his point of view, anyway.

 

+

 

By some miracle, Phil manages to avoid making actual eye contact or even exchanging a word with Clint. He’s kept busy coordinating the Cairo office’s retrieval of the weapons under the nose of assorted local government, some of whom are interested in acquiring tech, some of whom are covering up potential scandal, and some of whom are worried SHIELD might find evidence of their involvement. 

Fitz and Simmons immediately pounce on the weaponry on scene, communing with each other and the Chitauri tech in excited technobabble. Skye, who seems to have view the warehouse as a training ground for future bazaar shopping, helps them crack open crates to do inventory. (“Hey look, A.C.,” she says, holding up a fragment of appallingly ancient stone. “People writing on walls, worshipping cats—it’s the Internet, v1.”) Ward has history with the Egyptian military, so he makes himself least in sight. Melinda has her own history with the Egyptian military, so she moves through the crowd of officials like a weaponized Moses and parts their terrified sea.

“You called in _Hawkeye_?” Phil hisses into her ear when he has a spare moment. 

She levels that unimpressed look at him that apparently comes preinstalled in all the women he knows. “You went off-plan,” she reminds him.

“Things happened. I had to improvise.”

Melinda shrugs. “So did I.” 

“You had to improvise Hawkeye?”

She looks at him. “No,” she says. “You can thank me later.” And then she walks away.

Phil considers pursuing the matter, but he spots a glimpse of dirty blond hair through a sea of dark heads. His heartbeat kicks up. Coincidentally, he also remembers that he hasn’t filed paperwork on the instigation of an international incident. Since it’s obviously a priority to complete this before Nick hears about things through the grapevine, he digs up Ward, tells him to tell May that she’s in charge of the scene, and beats a tactical retreat to the Bus.

He’s hoping to find equilibrium in his office. Of course he finds Clint Barton instead.

“So,” Clint says without preamble. “Unacknowledged feelings towards a coworker?”

Clint is draped sideways across one of the guest chairs, one leg slung over an arm of the chair, the other foot planted firmly on the ground. Phil gets a mouth-drying view of strong back muscles, shoulders, and the nape of his neck before Clint turns his head to look at him. 

“Clint. I didn’t know you were in the area,” Phil says. He’s pleased by how composed he sounds. Without acknowledging his own momentary hesitation at the door, he goes to sit at his desk, pointedly bumping Clint’s free-dangling leg as he passes. Even without looking, he can feel Clint’s grin. It’s no surprise whatsoever to turn and discover that Clint has, if anything, slouched down and spread his legs even wider.

Phil is dismayed. Was Clint’s combat uniform really that tight around the crotch before? It really leaves nothing to the imagination.

“It was off the books,” Clint reassures, while Phil’s imagination promptly and enthusiastically proves him wrong. “I’m supposed to be in Alev for a training exercise. It doesn’t start until the day after tomorrow. SHIELD had a flight going out anyway, so I came out early. Fury said I could use a vacation, and then Melinda called me— anyway. Hope you don’t mind me crashing your office. I wanted a quiet place to finish my post-op.” He holds up a clipboard in one hand and waggles a pen in the other. 

Nick. Phil struggles not to grind his teeth. “I appreciate the help,” he says in as mild a tone as he can muster. “All things considered, I was running out of ways to distract them.”

“Like admitting unacknowledged feelings towards a coworker? C’mon, sir. You can’t leave me hanging. Someone I know?”

So they’re back to ‘sir,’ then. Phil registers the strain under the deliberately light voice. He has a split-second to decide what to do, as though he hasn’t been dreading and planning this encounter the entire way back to the Bus.

Listen to his gut. Right. “Him. Not her,” he says, and promptly winces.

There’s a flash of—something in Clint’s face. “I didn’t know you swung that way.”

“I don’t swing. I straddle,” Phil says. Then he winces again. 

Clint smirks. He straightens though, putting both feet on the ground to close his legs. Phil mourns. (No, he doesn’t. Dammit. Dammit! He doesn’t!) “Don’t tell me. It’s that science baby of yours, the Scottish one. I dunno, sir. I’d keep wanting to cut up his food for him and reminding him to go to bed. That would just get awkward after a while.”

“It’s not Fitz.”

“Agent Cheekbones, then.” Clint’s smirk grows. “I knew you had a competence kink.”

Phil opens his mouth to deny the competence kink. Realizes that would be a lie. Says instead, firmly, “It’s not Ward. In fact, it’s not someone on my current team.”

Clint purses his lips, but Phil doesn’t think he’s imagining the hope in his face. “Someone I know, though?”

“Someone you know,” Phil confirms. He discovers that he’s rubbing his knuckles under his desk. He makes himself to stop. He’s a grown man—a Level Eight agent of SHIELD, an ex-Ranger, fifty-two years old, certified on more types of weapon than theoretically exist—he does not _wring his hands_.

Clint regards him expectantly. Phil stares helplessly back. After an agonized minute, in which Phil tries to make himself say something and can’t quite manage it, Clint says, “Funny thing about unacknowledged feelings. Once you acknowledge them, they’re, you know, just feelings.”

Phil winces. For the third time. He’s been counting. 

The look Clint gives him is unabashedly fond. “I had this whacky conversation with Jasper right after I left the Hub on the Sierra Leone op. He said he told you I’ve been in love with you for years. Which— well, first, I freaked out.” This time, he’s the one who winces. “Accounting sent me a memo about the amount of ammunition I used on that op.”

“I read it,” Phil admits. 

Clint’s little smile is wry. “After I finished freaking out though, and called you—“ Phil thinks back to a tube of Biosperm, and manages not to react, “—and you called me _Clint_ … it made me think. You’d known for weeks and you hadn’t cut me out of your life. You hadn’t let me down easily. You’re not the kind to leave someone hanging if there was no hope. So I thought, maybe there was, and maybe you just didn’t know what to do next.”

Since Clint has his head down over his AAR, he doesn’t get to see Phil blush in a way he hasn’t since he was a gawky private just out of basic training. For fuck’s sake. Phil has faced down gods without a qualm. He’s fought giant metal flame-y killy things. He’s overset the laws of physics, come back from the dead, and flirted with commandos who were torturing him for intel. He can deal with an emotion— an emotional, feel, feelings, with lo— lov— fuck fuck _fuck_.

He takes a careful breath. In. Out. The best way to approach this is to avoid the question of emotion altogether. He checks his pulse. It’s faster than usual, but backing away from the far edge of panic. Treat this like a tactical exercise. Step one: gather intel. “Clint,” he says. “do you want me?”

“Okay,” Clint says cheerfully. “Just gimme a sec to finish drawing this layout.”

Phil begins patiently, “That wasn’t an offe—“ And then he stops. Rewinds. Blinks. “Wait. What?”

Clint jabs his pen at the paper, triumphant. “There,” he says, and looks up. His eyes are astonishingly, brilliantly green, and rapidly dilating. “Aw, Phil,” he says, his slow smile stealing Phil’s breath. “Do you have any idea how hot you are in that?”

Phil looks down at himself, baffled: the tac vest; the uneven, rolled up sleeves; the sloppily unbuttoned collar. Then he looks up to find Clint leaning over him. He doesn’t start, but it’s a near thing; Clint is close, very close, his breath tickling Phil’s cheek. He freezes, torn between fight and fuc— flight. 

“That wasn’t what I meant,” he says in a strangled voice.

“I know,” Clint says, his gaze fixed on Phil’s mouth. “But it's what I meant. I have it on good authority that if I actually man up and grow a pair, I might have a chance with you. I know you don’t date coworkers, but maybe if you just thought of this as a, a fuck between friends—?“

Clint looks so hopeful, so entreating, Phil can’t make himself argue. Besides, there’s no way _Hawkeye_ could miss the twitch in Phil’s pants, or the sudden hitch in his breath. The attention on his mouth makes Phil self-conscious. He licks his lips without thinking, a nervous flick of tongue. 

Clint’s eyes widen. He lowers his head to Phil’s, careful, giving him plenty of time to stop him. 

It’s a strangely tentative brush of lips, a far cry from Phil’s guilty imaginings of how Clint might kiss. His own lips are embarrassingly chapped; he feels the dry skin scraping across Clint’s and opens his mouth to apologize. Clint appears to take this as an invitation. Heartened, he presses more firmly into Phil, the kiss turning deep and languid in the space of a heartbeat. Phil leans into it, his hands closing over Clint’s arms.

The first he’s aware of being undressed is when Clint pulls away and Phil feels cold air on his chest. Clint’s hands burn where they touch him, fingers splaying wide to slide through his chest hair. Phil doesn’t even have a chance to be self-conscious about his scar or alarmed that he’s being touched by, oh shit, Clint Barton, before Clint lowers himself to kneel between Phil’s legs.

Phil swallows hard. 

“I’ve had so many fantasies about this, you have no idea,” Clint says huskily, nuzzling Phil’s stomach. “I imagined you just like this, blowing you behind your desk, your hands in my hair—“

It sounds like a good idea. Phil is always open to good ideas. He slides his hands through Clint’s thick hair, marveling that he’s been given permission to touch, to touch _Hawkeye_. Clint groans into his skin, making him shiver. His heart feels ridiculously full, laboring like it hasn’t—“You were going to hold out for a bed,” he remembers, dazed—since the first days of Tahiti, “It’s a magical place.”

The puff of Clint’s chuckle tickles his stomach. But that’s a minor distraction compared to the tension relieved as Clint works his belt open, unzips his pants, nudges his briefs down just far enough to expose him. It’s Phil’s turn to groan now, at the air blissfully cool against his dick, at the sight of Clint’s mouth so close to it. 

“Phil,” Clint says, pressing his cheek against Phil’s thigh. His breath is hot. Phil twitches. Clint looks up at him, eyes dark. “Is this okay?”

 _“Yes_ ,” he blurts out. Has a thought. “No, wait,” he gasps. “Wait. No. _Yes_ , but that’s not—“ It’s too late though; Clint is already pulling away, leaving empty cold where his warmth was, his face closing off into tight, set lines.

Phil doesn’t panic. He _doesn’t_. He _carefully_ and _deliberately_ grabs Clint’s forearms before he can retreat entirely, and pulls. Just enough to hold him where he is, really. Barely anything at all. A tiny pull.

Which, somehow, slams Clint face-first into Phil’s crotch.

It takes them both a breathtakingly long minute to realize what’s happened. 

“Fuck, fuck fuck fuck fuck!” Clint gabbles in rapid, gunfire panic, scrambling away. Phil becomes dimly aware that he’s being stared at, that Clint’s face is horrified. “I didn’t—! are you—?!“

“It’s fine,” he says distantly, vaguely impressed at his own self-control. If he concentrates on the way his fingernails are biting into his palms, it’s almost endurable. “Everything’s fine. We’re all fine here.”

“I _bit_ you _! On the dick!”_

“Yes. I noticed. It wasn’t your fault. Give me a moment. Is it—“ He can’t look. He swallows hard. “Is it still there?”

Clint darts a quick glance down, horror deepening. “Yes?”

All in all, the answer isn’t as reassuring as it could be. “Is there blood?”

“No!”

Phil will take it. “Just give me a minute,” he manages, staring blankly at Clint’s chest. “Don’t go anywhere. We need to talk.”

It takes longer than a minute for Phil to recover. Even if they didn’t break skin, Clint’s teeth are strong and sharp, and Phil could swear he can still feel the individual impression of each one on his dick. 

When he finally feels up to having an actual conversation, he finds Clint huddled on the small sofa, his shoulders and spine curled in to make himself as small as possible. The sight makes Phil’s chest hurt. He pauses only long enough to tuck himself away—it takes real effort not to hiss when his briefs press against the skin—and button his pants before hobbl— _walking_ to the sofa.

He sits (owfuck) down beside Clint, not quite touching him. 

Clint won’t look at him. 

Phil leans (owfuck again) a bit. Bumps Clint’s shoulder with his. 

Clint’s head droops. 

“So,” Phil says carefully. “That didn’t go the way I hoped.”

Clint’s head droops more.

“I thought I might try something new and talk about—” He wavers for a second, before forcing himself to continue, “—feelings. First. Set the parameters of the engagement.”

Clint makes a mournful sound.

Phil hesitates. It’s instinctive for him to comfort Clint, to try to give him what he needs. Dealing with Clint’s _wants_ has always been more problematic. Clint wants so little, but almost everything he ever has wanted has always been a case study in bad decisions. Being _wanted_ by Clint is a terrifying thought. 

He honestly doesn’t know what to do. He consults his gut. It says, do what comes naturally.

“I should’ve remembered your mouth always leaves an impression,” he says. Fuck his gut. Apparently, what comes naturally is to be an asshole.

Clint makes another sound. This one is indignant.

“Remind me to commend the SHIELD orthodontia department,” Phil says, pulling his pants out just enough to peer down at the sad squash of his dick. “It took them years, but they did good work. Nice, even arrangement, no significant gaps or misalignment.“

Clint quakes.

“Though I think you might have a cavity forming on your right lateral incisor.“

This time he gets a snicker. There’s no mistaking it. “‘Is it still there,’” Clint quotes.

“Your codename is Hawkeye. I trust your eyesight and your ability to give a comprehensive sitrep,” Phil says with dignity.

“Wow,” Clint says, looking up with a weak grin. “I was just planning on giving you a blow job. This wasn’t going to be a full-blown op. Well,” he amends, “full-blown, maybe, but not _op._ ”

Phil glares while Clint snickers some more. “Plans change.”

“People yank other people onto their dicks and get bit.”

“I didn’t _yank_ —“

“Yanked. Grabbed, pulled hard and sharply, without warning. That’s a yank.”

“I love you,” Phil blurts out.

Clint’s mouth, already open around some snarky retort, snaps shut. His teeth click audibly.

Phil twitches through retroactive panic and presses his knees together.

“That’s not fair,” Clint says after a second, shakily. He curls up again. “You can’t do that, Phil. You can’t say that if you don’t mean it.”

“I love you,” Phil forces out again, his cheeks warming. “I don’t know if I’m _in_ love with you—I’m not sure about a lot of things, actually—but I thought you should know that I love you. I’ve loved you for a long time.”

A beat. “Like a friend,” Clint says.

“Like a friend, yes, but more than that. I want—“ He exhales, annoyed at the complexities of _feelings_ and the limitations of the English language. “I want you to be happy. I want to make you happy. I want you to have the things that you need and the things that you want. I want to protect you. I want you to never be hurt again, but at the same time, I want you to have the freedom to make the choices that are best for you, even if they do hurt. I want to spend time with you, and make you laugh, and eat bad food together, and watch worse television, and talk about nothing in particular, or maybe not talk, and not do anything at all.” He snaps his mouth shut on the horrific flood of things that can’t be unsaid, feeling his entire body burn with embarrassment. This is painful on a _subatomic level_.

But Clint is listening. He’s relaxing from his tight little huddle. “So basically—“

“I love you, yes.”

“But you didn’t want me to give you a blow job because—?”

“Because it wouldn’t be fair,” Phil says. “Not without letting you know I don’t know if I’m _in_ love with you.”

Clint stares at him, his face blank. “Phil.”

Phil ignores the way his gut is hollowing out. Death as an emotional crutch sounds just great right now. “It’s fine if you’ve changed your mind about—“ He gestures back at the abandoned desk chair and tries to smile. “I understand.”

After a long, nerve-wracking silence, Clint finally says, “Okay.” Phil immediately feels nauseous, but Clint isn’t done. His grin is slow in coming, a little crooked, a little careful, but the tension is gone, leaving blinding warmth in its place. Phil’s heart flutters. “I still want to suck your dick.”

It takes Phil a second to process that. He says blankly, “Oh,” and looks down. He considers his dick. It feels bruised. “Um.”

“Not right now,” Clint says quickly. “I mean just, you know, in general. And in specific, when it doesn’t still have teeth marks on it. If you’ll trust your dick to me and my nice, evenly arranged teeth. And my reputation for poor impulse control.”

The nausea shifts, moving elsewhere; Phil has the strange feeling that his head is about to float up off his neck. Struggling not to smile, he points out, “You’re not filling me with confidence.”

“You wouldn’t be at all surprised how often I hear that.”

“You heard what I was saying, though,” he presses. “That I love you, but I’m not sure if I’m _in_ love with you?”

Clint is undismayed. “Message received. Loud and clear. I still want to suck your dick, though. And then I want you to fuck me. It doesn’t have to be on the same day. Maybe the morning after. I like morning sex. I’ve always fantasized about waking up with your fingers in me already, spreading me open, and then you just sliding right in—“

“Ow,” Phil says, folding over. His dick throbs agonizingly. The bruising is doing nothing to repress its enthusiastic approval of Clint’s suggestion. 

“—And just fucking me, slow and steady, maybe holding me down so I can’t rub myself off until you’re done, so I just have to _take_ it—“

This, Phil realizes sadly, is what comes of having a talk about feelings with Clint Barton. As with all unnatural things, the consequences are invariably painful. “This isn’t helping,” he grinds out.

“It’s one of my favorite fantasies,” Clint confides brightly. “I jack off to it almost every morning.”

“Clint.”

“My other favorite fantasy is where I mouth off on an op, so you gag me with your tie and strip me naked, you’re still wearing that black Hugo Boss suit, and you bend me back over your lap—“

“ _Stop!_ ”

Clint stops. “No pressure,” he says after a few seconds, while Phil reconstructs the tattered remnants of his dignity and slowly sits up. “I know sex in real life doesn’t usually live up to fantasies.”

“Thank you for your low expectations.”

“I just bit your dick. I’m pretty sure I’m bottoming out—heh—on expectations.”

Phil eyes him sidelong. Clint’s far too lit up with happiness given Phil’s careful caveats. Anxiety twists at his stomach, even as it does an odd swooping thing at the look Clint’s giving him. “It’s not fair of me to have sex with you while I’m not sure of my own feelings,” he says.

“Nah, it’s fine,” Clint says cheerfully. He presses two fingers to Phil’s neck, gentle over the throb of his quickening heartbeat. Phil leans into the touch. “You gave me the whole disclaimer thing. And now I know something about you that you don’t know.”

“What?” Phil asks, wary. “That I’m terrible at feelings? I already knew that.”

“Yeah, you are.” Clint says, fond once again, and leans forward to kiss him. Phil’s heart skips a beat. Clint smiles, the curve of his lips sweet against Phil’s mouth. “Don't worry about it. I’ll explain them to you,” he promises. “Later.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> So I just wrote an almost 10k story _just so I could use that joke about the Nile._
> 
> You think I'm kidding? I'm not kidding.
> 
> As usual, no betas were harmed in the making of this fic. Sadly.


End file.
